Dr. Aard J. Groen

Professor

Aard Groen holds a full professor position on entrepreneurship & valorization at the University of Groningen. He holds a part-time position at the Thapar University as distinguished professor in Entrepreneurship and Valorisation. He is also member of the academic staff of Excellence center for Watertechnology, Wetsus, theme uptake of watertechnology, a social science perspective. Groen supervises a PhD student on University-Industry Interaction in that context. Furthermore, he is CEO/founder of VentureLab International BV a Entrepreneurship Support Organization.

Dr. Groen was Dean entrepreneurship at the University of Groningen (2014 until September 2022). Founder of University of Groningen Centre of Entrepreneurship. Until beginning of 2020 Groen also held a full professor position on Innovative Entrepreneurship at the University of Twente, he was in 2001 co-founder of NIKOS centre of entrepreneurship at the University of Twente. At Thapar University (Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology and LM Thapar Business school) Dr. Groen is leading the academic and practical development of Thapar Innovate with programs like VentureLab Thapar, VentureLab Weekend. He is involved in research at Thapar and occasionally in teaching.

Groen’s research focuses on knowledge intensive entrepreneurship looking at growth differentials in start-ups, SME’s and corporate entrepreneurship processes in existing businesses across a range of advanced technology sectors, he uses multiple methods, and supervised since 2004 over 35 PhD students in this area. Since 2010 he started working on social entrepreneurship. Dr. Groen has written extensively on developing tech start-up and enterprise, scale businesses by leveraging industrial and international networks. He developed the 4S model for analyzing and designing (support of) entrepreneurial processes. He served as associate editor of Technovation and was editor of several special issues (For his publications, see: http://bit.ly/1jhj5Iq).

Professor Groen teaches on innovation, entrepreneurship, research methods, marketing and business development. He developed numerous courses in these areas, usually in a context where technology plays a big role, in business schools as well as in other schools like science and engineering or arts. Furthermore university wide programs such as university minors entrepreneurship, extra curricular courses and trainings/workshops for accelerator weekends and longer programs (up to 2 year).

As engaged scholar Dr. Groen is a leader in designing successful entrepreneurship accelerators and university entrepreneurship education programs, in the Netherlands, and internationally in countries such as Russia, India, China and in a Erasmus+ projects in the Baltic area and Latin-America.

His keynotes on university-industry collaboration, technology commercialization, key competencies for entrepreneurship, and leveraging networks for business development are featured at international conferences and symposia. Groen is adviser to several startups and growing companies and in advice/selection committees for example for EIT-Manufacturing, NWO Netherlands Science Foundation, SNN (EU subsidies for Northern Netherlands).

Groen received his master in public administration at the University of Twente and his PhD in business administration at the University of Groningen on a study on adoption of environmental technology in SME’s.